boylan@dicomed.UUCP (05/26/84)
This is the story of a Citicorp applicant... It's fairly
long but I had an interesting time trying to find out about
this. Your local bank knows everything...
I applied for the Citicop account that has been so heavily advertised
recently. $2500 minimum, 7% federal tax free and the bit. I didn't
provide my social security number and my date of birth.
The people at Citicorp have called me 7 times about it. I have
talked to three different people about it and I do not think I am
getting the account although I have an excellent credit history.
After talking to the SS administration, the Federal Information
agency, Rudi Boswitz's (wrong spelling and he is a US senator)
office, the state of Minnesota Attorney Generals Office (who
talked to the Fed office of the Comptroller of the Currency)
AND ... my bank, I have discovered a couple of interesting things.
As previously stated in this forum, there is NOTHING to prevent
private organizations or individuals from denying you service
based upon your providing your SSN. In fact, you are not even required
to provide it to a bank, although my bank said that they no longer
would accept accounts by people who wouldn't provide it since
they would have to withhold taxes and it's too much bother.
The SS administration said (again as previously stated here)
that the laws in this regard only apply to government organizations.
(I have a friend who just quit at the U of Minnesota and the form
to extract his retirement money says that he does not have to
provide his SSN but if he doesn't they have no method of processing
his paperwork and won't given him his money back.)
The SS adminstration recommends that private organizations do
not require the SSN for services but were SPECIFICALLY prohibited
by congress from enforcing this regulation (in other words they
shouldn't do it but the SS administration isn't allowed to make
them not do it and thus there aren't any penalities for requiring
the SSN in exchange for services.)
The people at Citicorp put up with a lot before giving up on me.
They told me that they "had to have it" but the only reason they gave
me was that they needed it to check with the credit bureaus for my
credit record to due a debt burden analysis (I love that phrase) on
me. They didn't explicitly turn me down but have stopped calling
me back to check on my progress on getting a legal opinion before
I gave them the SSN (they wouldn't give me their number in South Dakota).
They even offered to give me the number of a wheel in their legal
department in NY to check up on the legalities of what they were
doing. I called my bank instead.
The Attorney General's Office here told me that the Comptroller
of The Currency had received quite a few complaints about this
very same thing with Citicorp and GET THIS, for sometimes requiring
people to submit copies of their tax returns in order to get the
account. (At the same time I was doing all this, I saw an article
in the Journal about how Citicorp was quite arrogant as a corporation
and that various analysts thought they were going to be hurt by this
in their consumer banking ventures.)
After all of this I decided that I didn't like Citicorp and like
a good little Capitalist I wasn't going to purchase their services
and besides, I found a taxable account that has better yields even
in my tax bracket ... (flame about high taxes/bad services goes here)
The point of all this is that, contrary to what you hear, you
have to provide your SSN to get these type of services or probably
go without. Write your congressman/entity and bitch.
--
Chris Boylan
{mgnetp | ihnp4 | uwvax}!dicomed!boylantackett@wivax.UUCP (Raymond Tackett) (05/29/84)
When Citicorp asked me for my SSN to send a VISA card, I just wrote
"illegal question" in the blank. My card arrived promptly, no hassle.
I even got a one-time bonus. It took them nearly three months to get
their billing going. No finance charge for the time.
--
Random Access is IMMORAL!
Ray Tackett